Tony Joe White - High Sheriff of Calhoun Parrish

It was 1970. “I was playing in New York, at the Bitter End, when someone handed me a napkin with a note on it – would you please play High Sheriff? – signed BD. At the time, I thought it was from a girl. At the end of the concert, as I was heading to the dressing room, the waitress told me the message was from Bob Dylan. He wanted to meet me at the bar. I went there and we had a chat. The first time I heard him, he immediately seemed like a kindred spirit to me.”
The protagonist of the song is falsely accused of having bothered the sheriff’s uninhibited daughter, and the sheriff throws him in jail without hesitation. But he manages to escape.
cit. Il Blues 2/2018